Industrial robotics
Power PMAC motion control for Delta, SCARA, Multiple Axis and Custom Kinematics Robot and robot-integrated machine control, with user-defined kinematics and coordinated axes
Forward and inverse kinematics written in C · Robot and machine axes on one controller
Power PMAC supports robot control as part of general multi-axis machine control. Kinematics are defined by the machine builder rather than selected from a supported list, and robot axes are planned by the same controller as the rest of the machine.
Delta and parallel robots.
High-speed pick and place, where cycle time is limited by how quickly the arms can be driven without exciting the structure. Jerk-limited profiles and inverse kinematics run on the controller.
SCARA and Cartesian handling.
Robot, conveyor, indexer and tooling axes planned by one controller, without cross-system synchronisation.
Articulated and custom geometries.
Robot arms, multiple axis and non-standard geometries. Forward and inverse kinematics are written as C routines, after which the arm is programmed in Cartesian coordinates.
Hexapods and parallel positioners.
Six-strut platforms for alignment, test and simulation, with the transform solved by the controller and the platform commanded in six degrees of freedom.
Conveyor tracking and vision guidance.
Hardware position capture latches the conveyor encoder when a sensor or camera triggers, giving an accurate part position. Robot targets can be updated during a move in progress.
Force-aware assembly and dispensing.
Direct PWM control of the amplifier current loop provides direct torque command, and the control law can be written to close on force feedback.
Wafer and cleanroom robots.
Smooth low-particle motion with vacuum-compatible drives, coordinated with the rest of the tool.
A coordinate system is given forward and inverse transform routines, after which linear and circular interpolation, lookahead, feedrate control and jogging in tool coordinates operate on top of them.
One controller supports up to 256 motors and 256 independent coordinate systems, so a machine with multiple robots, indexers, conveyors and servo tooling runs on a single time base. Axes can be reassigned between coordinate systems under program control.
The platform supports multi-vendor motors and feedback, EtherCAT for drives and I/O, PLC logic on the controller for sequencing, and real-time C for functions outside the standard feature set. Functional safety is implemented with STO-capable drives and a safety controller over FSoE, kept separate from the motion control.
EtherCAT-based cells typically use CK3E or CK3M with Omron or third-party servo drives. Power Brick LV suits low-voltage axes such as small arms, gantries and direct-drive joints, integrating four or eight drives with the controller. Power UMAC is used for cells with high axis counts or multiple robots. The Power PMAC IDE includes an offline simulator for validating kinematics and sequences before hardware is available.
Discuss a project
Send us the machine specification or the control requirement and we will advise on whether Power PMAC is a suitable platform, and what hardware configuration it would need.
